Windows Phone Marketplace game market analysis

Windows Phone 7 is yet another operating system for mobile devices and yet another platform for mobile developers. While Android and Apple iOS hold the major share in the smart phone application market, the main question is: “Should mobile developers publish their apps for Windows Phone 7 too?”
Mobile application development is all about market potential and revenues from applications, so today I would like to share a little bit of Windows Phone Marketplace game statistics that could be useful for all of you.

To begin with, at the moment Windows Phone Marketplace suggest that there are 460 games in 12 categories. While there is no information about the downloads themselves, let’s take a look at the numbers that we can see.

As you can see in the chart above, only 13% of the games are distributed free of charge. Most of those games are demo/light versions. Another interesting point here is that 2 most popular prices for the games are $0.99 and $6.99.

Games by Highest Price

Application

Category

Price

Comments

Swoosh Mobile

Sports

$19.99

1

Jackpot Casino

Cards & Casino

$15.99

0

Dominoes

Strategy

$14.99

4

Checkers

Strategy

$14.99

2

IVY THE KIWI

Action

$11.99

27

Top 5 paid games by comments

The table below illustrates the number of comments per paid application. The number of comments are not that high and the most commented application (free) is Meon Light with over 2100 comments which is 10 times more than its paid version. Moreover, it is clear that most of Windows Phone 7 users are interested in Word & Puzzle and Strategy games.

Application

Category

Price

Comments

Suitor

Words & Puzzles

$0.99

282

Meon

Words & Puzzles

$2.99

215

Tower Defense

Strategy

$6.99

168

Hunting

Strategy

$0.99

137

Droplets

Strategy

$1.99

95

As mentioned before Strategy games are quite popular. Words and Puzzles are also very popular. If you look closely you going to notice that there are only few simulation and driving games which makes it look more popular in the chart.

It is obvious that games are quite popular on Windows Phone 7 smartphones especially strategy, word & puzzle or simulator games. Even though sales of smartphones with Windows Phone 7 are not as good as expected it might change suddenly with introduction of new Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices next quarter.